Design education is mostly based on the visual values and expressions. How do we REDO design education? This paper is questioning the predominance of visual culture and investigating the new non-visual perspectives on fashion design aesthetics. The main discussion of this paper is on sound as a design-thinking material. This paper is focused on the exploration of sonic expressions and sonic identities as the possibility for a new method of teaching on the discourse of non-visual aesthetics. The Sonic Images – a fashion exercise is presented as an example of design-thinking with a sound that could lead to a new approach to teaching on non-visual values of design objects.

Although sound, touch, and smell are elements of clothing, the visual sense is predominant in fashion and fashion education, and fashion is essentially understood as a system of visual components. As an alternative to this dominant focus on visuality, fashion could be explored as a sound based interaction between body and dress.This artistic statement invites readers to rethink fashion as a visual culture and opens up a nonvisual perspective on fashion design aesthetics in regards to a sonic identity. The Soundtopia—a scenario of five possibilities for future sonic fashion and behavior—is presented as a new direction for alternative forms of design thinking through sound.

Fashion design as a field and fashion design methods are mostly based on visual values and expressions. This paper investigates alternative non-visual perspectives on fashion design aesthetics. The study on sound ontology in fashion, for example, is limited and presents a new and interesting potential territory to be explored. The main aim of this paper is therefor to explore ‘sonic fashion’ through speculative design research methods. The Soundtopia – a speculative fashion design method is presented as the introductory sonic explorations in regards to sonic identity. The paper introduces sonic qualities and sonic identities and suggests the new possibilities for alternative forms of design-thinking to open in research programs in non-visual aspects of person-object relationships in design.

Aural experience and sound thinking, in contrast to visual experience and image thinking, change the fundamental manifestation and perception of a dressed body: from looking and being seen to listening and being heard. Looking at and listening to a body that is wearing high heels are fundamentally different experiences. Although sound is an element of dress and identity, the visual sense is predominant in fashion and fashion education, and fashion is essentially understood to be a system of visual components. As an alternative to this dominant focus on the visual, this research investigates the sonic aspects of fashion, approaching them as largely unexplored and potentially interesting ontological alternatives with which to create an understanding of fashion that goes beyond visual stimuli.

The primary aim of the research presented in this thesis was to develop an introductory programme for sonic fashion that suggests a shift in focus – from visual perception and appearance to sonic. The programme consists primarily of ontological theory components: methods, tool-shifters, terms, definitions, and categories.

The research was conducted through investigations of sonic dress and sonic expressions, which were approached as interactions between the body and dress that occur during the act of wearing. Sonic aspects were explored on a fundamental level – i.e. the natural (physical) sounds of dress – in a manner that is relatively unprecedented in the fashion field, and so the research was experimental and speculative.

Knowledge regarding sonic expressions was collected using sound-based thinking in the form of listening/sounding research artefacts, which raised ontological questions; What is a sonic silhouette? How a sonic silhouette is created?

The research was conducted by exploring, recording, and systematising sounds arising from body-dress and dress-dress interactions, as well as speculative experimental workshops with students and case study involving people with differing seeing abilities.More generally, the research broadens our conception of fashion aesthetics by presenting a new direction for the fashion design field; a non-visual aesthetic that is based on sonic expression, wherein sound is considered to be a design/design thinking material and an alternative way of defining a silhouette.

The dress is a part of constructing and defining our identity. As a form of visual communication, clothing is a powerful means of making statements. Currently, fashion design products are developed based on the transmission of an image, referred to as a ‘culture-screen’, which makes the interaction process focused on the visual experience. Although sound, touch, and smell are elements of clothing, the visual sense is predominant in fashion and fashion education, and fashion is essentially understood as a system of visual components. As an alternative to this dominant focus on visuality, fashion could be explored as a sound-based interaction between the body and dress. The existing study of sound ontology in fashion is limited; thus, it is a largely new and interesting territory to be potentially explored. What is a sonic identity in the field of fashion? My research Aesthetics of the Invisible: Toward a Sonic Fashion Ontology is widening the notion of what aesthetics is by developing a new direction for fashion design on non-visual aesthetics based on sonic expressions. The sound is considered as a design-thinking material and an alternative, experimental way of defining a form for a silhouette. The sound installation Noisy Bodies is a part of the research practice–Sonic Fashion Library. The Noisy Bodies consist of 40 selected sound records of clothing, shoes, and accessory. The audience is invited to explore an acoustic dimension of fashion by listening to this sonic collage.

10. Design Week’16

Stasiulyte, Vidmina (Designer)

University of Borås, Faculty of Textiles, Engineering and Business. The Swedish School of Textiles.

The sound installation Sonic Somatic is based on the exploration of the sonic identities. This art project considers the notion of sonic object and sonic subject as a binary system of interaction between human body and sounding object(s) and two stages: (1) being a sound and (2) wearing a sound. Sonic Somatic consists of three parts: a) low-tech sound amplifiers b) interactive sonic fashion library; c) sonic dummy.

12. Future Ways of Wearing

Stasiulyte, Vidmina (Artist)

University of Borås, Faculty of Textiles, Engineering and Business. The Swedish School of Textiles.

How can we design for the future? In this avant-garde exhibition architects, interaction, fashion and textile designers show their works in progress when they speculate about, collaborate on, and define how to strengthen the foundations of design for more sustainable forms of living.

The exhibition Speculate, collaborate, define – textile thinking for future ways of living, is a work in progress by the PhD students in the ArcInTexETN project. ArcInTexETN is an EU-funded training network of early stage researchers exploring new expressions of living through textile thinking. They collaborate in three scales – building, interior, and body – looking into methods for turning current scientific knowledge into the design of new forms of living.

With videos as their main medium, the students present different takes on the subject. In “Ahti”, a speculative short film about the first human being born in space, the story is set in the future. It’s 2076 and there is no water left on our planet Earth. Ahti wears the same suit every day, like a second skin. The skin has different properties that protect him and allow him to walk on any surface, levitate, communicate and store energy.

Have you heard about the Wolpertinger? It’s a hybrid animal whose appearance evokes the idea that, however different the parts are, they constitute a whole, functioning organism. With the animal as an analogue, a collection of videos are projections of different pieces of work, showing a patchwork of cooperation, exposing the working process of collaborative design.

The film “What is interior?” presents an interior landscape, a shifting view of this paradoxical space, narrated by a linguistic review that argues to define the term interior. The film gives an examination of the definitions that frame the term, as well as creating the fleeting textures that shapes it.

In addition to the video projections there are also three individual installations. So, bring your nose and your curiosity! This is not only an audio-visual exhibition.

15. Speculate, Collaborate, Define

Stasiulyte, Vidmina (Artist)

University of Borås, Faculty of Textiles, Engineering and Business. The Swedish School of Textiles.

What is the notion of a sounding body? During a collaborative project Sound Map me and PhD student Linnea Bågader were exploring the relationship between the body, movement, and sound. Various attachable sounding objects choreographed the movements of body and inspired to speculate on the future identity and behavior based on sonic expressions. Map format installation invites to listen and explore the bodily rhythms as an echo of a particular sound. During a collaborative project Sound Map, PhD students Vidmina Stasiulyte and Linnea Bågader were exploring the relationship between the body, movement, and sound. Various attachable sounding objects choreographed the movements of body and inspired to speculate on the future identity and behavior based on sonic expressions.